


chimera

by deepandlovelydark



Category: Annihilation - Fandom, MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Camping, Character Death, Oh Dear, beautiful monstrosities, everything is a metaphor, for cancer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 04:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13967394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: "Nobody's ever come back from the Shimmer.""That's all right," Mac says cheerfully. "We're the best team on the planet. We'll fix it."Of course, Mac's a perpetual optimist; but nothing's ever stopped them before, Riley figures. Right?Right...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So there was an episode of MacGyver in which Mac and Jack and Riley are prancing around Chernobyl. I watched it and said, "eh."
> 
> Then I watched Annihilation, which began the same basic concept of a team going into a shattered wasteland, but does different and way angsty things with it. I said, "hmm," and got to work on a spoiler-happy fusion. I'm planning to make it understandable from the MacGyver side of things, even if you haven't seen the movie. 
> 
> (Though, this ain't gonna be pretty.)
> 
> (abandoned: I just plum forgot what the story was going to be. Write down your ideas, kids!)

Four days. They've lost four days. 

At least, Mac's insisting they must have been inside the Shimmer that long, since twelve meals worth of MREs have gone missing from their bags. Jack thinks they were hypnotised or bashed on the head or something by thieving scavengers. Cage is agreeing with Mac; scavengers, she says, would have taken everything they had, and anyway, her CIA-issued watch has recorded the passage of four days...

Riley opens their tent flap and wanders off, away from the argument. 

"Hey. If this place is gonna do in our heads after being in here for all of five minutes, we'd better not separate, huh?"

Bozer comes out after here. Grabs her hand as though she's going to vanish on him. She'd rather have some time to herself, but lets him. 

"Five minutes? Even if Jack's right, we've been in here at least long enough to be knocked out." 

"But psychologically," Bozer says, shaking his head, "it's only five minutes ago that we were walking in here. Armed and ready for bear, and now suddenly the light's different, surroundings are different, we've set up camp and don't remember doing it. You know what? I bet time's weird in here. Like in a movie, when they fade away from the protagonist for a moment, and suddenly we're skipping ahead- like that."

"Maybe that's why none of the other teams ever made it back," Riley jokes. "They skipped ahead too far."

"Could be. Or maybe it's because we're the heroes. We're the team that's gonna make it through."

"Are you going to interpret everything on this trip in terms of movies?"

"Nah," Bozer says, after a moment. "I mean, if we were in a romcom, sure, but if it's a horror flick- you know what the survival odds are for the comedic sidekick? I'll stick to real life, thanks."

"Because going into an alien bubble with an ex-Delta Force operative, a world-class hacker, a disgraced superspy and whatever it is that Mac does, sounds so much like real life to you?"

The saddest thing about Bozer's swearing is that he isn't even very good at it.

Riley takes the opportunity to teach him some better ones.

*************

_one week earlier. Phoenix Foundation._

_safe in smoggy LA_

"Georgia?" Jack ventures, incredulously. "What's in Georgia?"

"The Shimmer," Matty says, pulling up their mission on the screen. Words and words, but nothing to compare to the picture floating in front of them. Iridescent colours glimmering in a forest, like rainbows after rain. 

"I've heard of this," Mac says. "She's still growing, huh?"

Matty throws a dirty look at him. "That wasn't a file you were supposed to have access to. Riley-"

"Guilty as charged," Riley says immediately. It's not worth trying to keep secrets from Matty, whatever Bozer thinks. "But he was curious about it...and I had a hunch it might land on our doorstep eventually."

"For the benefit of those of us who don't read ahead," Jack says, rolling his eyes, "does anybody want to explain what a shimmer actually is?"

Matty shrugs. "Figuring that out is half your mission. It shimmers, it's growing, and nobody inside ever comes out. No radio signals, no telephone or satellite, no messages of any kind."

"Presumably," Cage says, in her calculating voice, "the other half of the job is figuring out how to make it stop."

"Exactly. Now, we do have a definite starting point for you. Local news reported a small meteor shower near a lighthouse, here," she says, gesturing at the map. "More or less at the dead centre of the infection, or whatever it is, about twenty miles in- so that's what you ought to make for."

"Aliens, huh?" Jack drawls. "That's not exactly in Phoenix's remit, is it?"

"This isn't in anybody's remit, Jack," Matty says softly. "First it was the lighthouse keeper, then the Coast Guard, then a unit from the National Guard. Whatever's going on in there, it's going to take smarts to handle it."

"Hardly worth sending me, then..."

"Question," Bozer asks. "How about sending us in a sub?"

"Bad move," Mac says immediately. "If something's in there capable of scrambling messages, you don't want to be in a submarine when the electronics cut out."

"Oh."

"And," Matty says, resigned, "there are- things, coming out of those waters. Odd things. I am not having my best team eaten by a shark-octopus like the last one was. You're going in on foot."

"Information scrambling," Mac says to Riley, in answer to her unspoken question. "Scrambled radio, scrambled species...that's why Matty wants you along. You're our pattern recognition expert."

"I wasn't going to assign her," Matty says. "But that's not a bad point. Do you want to?"

"Sure. But why can't we go by car?" Riley asks. She's a computer hacker, after all, not a muscular hiker. 

"Because there isn't a road any longer, the undergrowth's eaten it away. Don't dally, people."

They'd promised. 

And now four days have gone missing- where?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "it's not quite the one thing and it's not quite the other,"
> 
> "as you'd expect"

_The way people talk about their lives flashing before their eyes (particularly Jack, who jokes that if he can't remember where his keys are, he just hangs around Mac until somebody tries to shoot him)- the way people talk make it sound like a continuous process. A coherent stream of thought, a sensible story._

_Instead, Riley’s just recalling random bit and pieces and flashes of chaos, while a strangely glossy alligator chases her through a field of hybrid, parti-coloured weeds-_

_\- "Nine months, less two weeks the Shimmer's been here," Mac had said, and she'd replied that at the end of their mission it would be-_

_\- her mother resting against Jack and laughing at one of his frivolities, looking as relaxed as she's been in years-_

_-Leanne's face, clear even in the dark-_

_-pumping out all her weapon's ammo into the monster's mouth, knowing that she's wasting it but unwilling to let it go, unwilling to leave be until the freakin' thing will just. stop. moving!-_

_"It's okay, Riley," Jack's saying. "It's okay. It's dead. You can stop now."_

She shudders and forces herself to concentrate on the present. This one particular fragment.

Mac’s already on the ground and inspecting the creature. That's the scientist all over, interested in everything. Sam stands guard, confidently; Bozer, somewhat less so. 

Jack sits close by, smiling at her as he reloads her gun. She has mixed feelings sometimes about her weapons-happy father figure, but just now, she wouldn’t swap him for anybody on earth. 

“Nice going. Couldn’t have done better myself,” he tells her sincerely; and she believes him. 

“This can’t be,” MacGyver complains, as he stares into the monster’s maw (he’s levered it open with a titanium tent pole). “I was sure Matty was joking, but- this really does look like genetic engineering here. Intermingled species. An alligator with teeth like a shark’s, but skin like a frog-”

“Like a flower petal,” Riley hears herself saying. “Tore like a rose petal.” Now that it’s over, she can remember the sight more clearly than she could see it at the time: the way the creature’s skin had rippled in life, tender skin giving way to the too solid flesh beneath. Beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. 

Cage isn’t impressed, but Mac nods. Carefully wipes his hands clean, before running one through his hair in frustration. “I wish I’d taken more biology. Maybe I’m a good all-rounder, but I don’t know that I have what it takes for this particular job. We could use some first class biochemists, and a couple dozen other specialists, at that. The odd cryptozoologist, maybe.”

“All-rounder?” Jack asks. “C’mon, Mac, this is what you’re made for. I’d put you up against a Nobel prize winner any day for field work.”

“Hmm,” MacGyver says; but with amusement. 

“Though so much for your super-light inflatable boat, huh?” Bozer says, with a laugh that almost manages not to be nervous. “Imagine how long that would last between this thing’s teeth.”

“He’s right,” Cage agrees. “I vote we head back to that boathouse and poke around for a heavy-duty craft, if we’re gonna stick with Plan A and take the river down to the shore. Something big and heavy and made of metal. ”

(Not the same as stealing, if there’s no one else to use it. Nobody wants to be the first to say it out loud; but they all know better than to expect a cozy meet-up with the prior expeditions. This isn’t going to be that sort of mission.)

“I’m seconding that,” Jack says. 

“Third,” Bozer says, after a moment. 

MacGyver’s looking so disappointed- he really had worked hard on that flexible, biodegradable plastic, to let them navigate the swampy waters easily- that Riley doesn’t have the heart to make it unanimous. “I’m up for it. It’ll be quicker to row yours out of trouble, if we get into any.”

“Thanks,” Mac says, a bit wry. “Honestly, though...I think steel might be safer. Under the circumstances.”

It’s a rare moment of uncertainty from the team genius; and Riley doesn’t like it. Seems like a bad omen. 

She feels better when Jack elbows Mac in the ribs, pretending to snap a selfie with the bloated monster (though after five days, their phones are all out of juice). Everybody laughs: if Mac’s their brain, Jack’s definitely the heart. Which makes her- what? 

What is a computer hacker doing on this team, anyhow? Maybe that’s why she’d first started softening towards Bozer. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here either.

“Spleen,” Riley says aloud. 

Mac glances at her. “Adjunct to the cardiovascular system, manufactures red blood cells. You can live pretty happily without one, actually.”

“That’s why it’s funny,” she says, and doesn’t bother trying to explain. 

Naturally he doesn’t understand, but his next smile is just for her, so it sticks in her mind. Later. 

(Now. Fragments.)


End file.
